Godspeed
by Old Kasperl
Summary: Who knew that dead men's memories were kept in Pensieves? At least certain dead men... important ones from the Dark Days. Harry gets something he didn't expect. Heart-tugging. Please R/R


"Godspeed"  
  
Snape cast him one last dark look and shoved the basin toward him harshly, so that the silvery-white substance inside sloshed violently. Snape dripped hate even from the end of his long hooked nose and snarled,  
  
"Take it, Potter, and leave me."  
  
None of that seemed to matter very much. Harry looked into the liquid, if he could call it liquid, and swallowed something. He hardly thought this was possible. Wouldn't a person's thought extinguish along with the rest of him? And had everyone used a Pensieve? How come no one had ever told him about this before?  
  
"I'll ask you again, Potter, or you can leave it here, and go wallow in superiority with your precious trio--"  
  
"I'm taking it." said Harry at last. He could not rouse himself to anger. But still he did not move, but hovered above the basin like one frozen.  
  
"GO!"  
  
Harry went. At the door he put the basin carefully on his hip to gain a free hand for the door. At the last second Snape's voice came to him again.  
  
"Take it to the toilets."  
  
Harry could not even register the absurdity of this remark before Snape added,   
  
"The toilets on the tenth floor are out of order."  
  
Harry nodded. Then for a split-second Snape was in the corner of his eye with an expression of -- pity? Harry whirled to look him full in the face. He saw nothing. Snape's voice rang out in the empty dungeon once again.  
  
"Professor Dumbledore will come get you in an hour." A sneer again, "be careful, Potter. We both know how ... sugar-sweet all your father's memories are."  
  
Harry left. That was the first time Snape had referred in the smallest way to Harry's previous encounter with James in a Penseive. And he felt no anger.  
  
~~~  
  
Hermione's voice told him to be careful as he shakily knelt on the icy floor on a stall. He rested on that thought for a minute-- but his hands were quivering and he brushed his splaying hair out of his eyes. His one chance. Less than an hour now. What would he see? More taunts aimed at Snape? Something in his heart laughed cruelly before he could stop it. One of the three times his parents had mysteriously evaded and defied Voldemort? His grandparents -- his heart dropped -- Sirius? In a region in his chest he was ravenously hungry and almost pushed his head inside the basin. No --   
  
James' first date with his, Harry's, mother? Perhaps his first day at Hogwarts. Which thread of memory would he land on -- pain? fear? love? happiness? tedium?  
  
Harry's brain was a dull heat behind his eyes, and he tried to force his heart down from where it was lodged in his throat. Hermione had also said there was only one way to find things out -- so he leant in closer, sealed his eyes shut and dipped his whole head into the Penseive, willing himself into mere memory.  
  
~~~  
  
  
  
He was aware of nothing at first but silence. A stillness was around him and he was only halfway aware of the thoughts that went through his mind. Indeed, only halfway aware of his mind.  
  
It was dark everywhere except in a corner of the room, where light flickered absently like a sleepy candle. There was a rustling below his phantom form and he settled down softly to rest on the cradle mattress -- he was in a cradle. Something stirred in his midriff and he looked down despite the blue white mist in his eyes.  
  
A baby. Laying on its back but not asleep, dark hair curling softly about the tops of its ears. A cooing came into the air from the child, and its eyelids lifted whimsically before fluttering closed again.  
  
Harry stared at it through the transparent color of his abdomen as the air washed noisily through his ears.  
  
The baby was he.  
  
He edged up against the head of the cradle with his heels and tried to get off the infant. He knew why he was here once again. He was inside a memory (he thought he saw James' head flit past the dim doorway) and it was not a memory of battle or bravery, or even tense horror. It was a memory of him.  
  
Still there was silence, and Harry sat in his position for an uncountable stretch of time. He couldn't think of how he had gotten here-- he was in his father's memory, but from what sort of magic? Whose? And who were the faces that kept surfacing in his mind? He vaguely thought that he could recognize them, but as soon as he gripped the tail of a thought it was away from him. Mostly his heart beat evenly and heavily in his ears. He was aware of a streaming amount of something in his heart that never wilted or increased-- contentment. Love. Safety.  
  
Now there were noises, soft ones, like the brushing of one person against another while passing and he saw his father above him.   
  
His father, dark hair askew, leaning over Harry the baby with kindled eyes to watch him in his sleeping pram -- kiss him goodnight? -- with the soft light from the nursery candle flickering behind him and on the ridges of his glasses. In the strange half-light his hazel eyes crinkled and laughed and his brought his face down to -- yes, kiss him goodnight. Harry the baby and Harry the stranger were one then, and all he felt in his breast -- all he COULD feel -- was Safe and Warm and Sleepy and Daddy --  
  
Harry was only aware of the coursing tears on his face when James had stepped back, and hungrily Harry shifted position to crouch over himself the infant. He curled in a shivering fetus position right over and in the gurgling baby who knew nothing of this warmth and would never remember it --   
  
There was his mother.   
  
And Harry suddenly remembered her hair. Her thick, coursing hair of the most brilliant color and scent. And he remembered her smell. How could he ever have forgotten it? His mother. He was loose now, and crying ceaselessly and soundlessly in the quiet room with the quiet family who did not know him.  
  
"Sshh..." rumbled his father, because the baby had started to cry as well. "Wipe away the weeps, love. C'mon."  
  
His mother reached down -- through Harry -- and pressed her hand against the warm forehead of her child. Then a humming rose from her throat and whispered words that she sang.  
  
"Dragon tales and the 'water is wide'...  
  
Pirate's sail and lost boys fly  
  
Fish bite moonbeams every night  
  
...And I love you  
  
Godspeed, little man  
  
Sweet dreams, little man  
  
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angel's wings  
  
Godspeed  
  
Sweet dreams..."  
  
The tune lilted and faded away, and Harry knew he would never again forget the song. It came to him as something from a dream.   
  
"Godspeed, little man..."  
  
The child below him (or inside him?) had quieted now and seemed to have fallen asleep. His parents passed away from the cradle once again into darkness, and he heard them whispering softly, words thick with love, and in a last fleeing sight Harry saw James kiss his mother gently on the mouth.  
  
Tears were still flooding his mouth and nose and he was struggling to breathe in all the beauty and longing and pain.  
  
"Please, Dumbledore," he said, without knowing who he spoke of, and his voice cracked "please... don't take me ... away again..."  
  
The tune was playing in his ears again and he did not remember any more as he was carried away to sleep.  
  
~~~  
  
  
  
Dumbledore had not taken him, though his hour was up.  
  
Harry woke splayed heavily on the cold tile. His glasses were on the other side of the stall. His cheek retained an imprint of the cracks in the floor when he felt it tenderly.   
  
In the air just above his head hovered words, in Dumbledore's loopy handwriting. They did not glow bright as he had seen them in times before, but seemed to be made of a fine white smoke. They fluttered in a tiny draft.  
  
"I HAD NOT THE HEART."  
  
Harry stared at them until they were burned into his vision.   
  
And finally, at long last, he knew Dumbledore was right.   
  
He had the heart.   
  
And that was what hurt. 


End file.
